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The fair, the market, the Soo

Evan, the grandson of our new friend Betty already had won Grand Champion for his chicken, and on this day he was showing his lamb and hog.

You know how it is…we stopped by for a minute…and stayed for two hours!

The sheep barn was in high gear, because the classes were showing….We caught Evan in line, waiting to enter the ring….The children’s faces were so expressive! The little girl waived to the camera as she squinted in the bright sun. The three in the ring positioned their animals under the watchful eye of the judge….Evan told us about raising his hog, Carl, and about his experience in past years of selling the hogs afterward.We stopped by the chicken barn to see his Grand Champion…and found she had laid an egg! Around the corner was another cage with a mother and her tiny chicks…if only they’d stand still for a split second!It’s always been interesting to us that Ross and Ryan don’t seem to care for live animals. No matter how soft the fur, how quietly it sits still, no matter what….they just don’t want to pet them or anything! That’s okay, Robyn and I still had fun!

Then on to the Soo.

Evan’s grandmother and father couldn’t see the day’s fair events because they were helping customers of their two farms at the weekly farmers market in the Soo, just a block from the locks.

We stopped by to say hi, and walked away with a week’s worth of produce, and an apple/peach tart pie from another vendor. Oh baby!Just downriver from the locks is this massive hydroelectric plant that was built in 1902. What an amazing edifice; I’d LOVE to shoot inside!The channel downriver from the locks is surprisingly narrow. I’ve mentioned the narrow channel between DeTour Village and Drummond Island….but that’s about a mile wide. This one is maybe 1000 feet wide for about a mile below the locks!

We watched a Coast Guard tug tow a hapless pleasure boat past our position. The red line in the water helps emphasize to boats and ships that the channel is on this side…the far side is pretty much a small lake with outlets through some small channels. The sailboats stick to that side, because this side has very swift current and, at times, very large ships! You might be able to see the osprey nest on the channel post ahead of the Coast Guard boat.Later, Ross and Ryan watched one of the ubiquitous tour boats pass us at the narrowest part of the channel…well, Ross watched…Ryan was absorbed in exploration of the stones at his feet….